


Things will never be the same again

by plikki



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Identity Reveal, Post-Episode: s03 Chat Blanc, Songfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-26
Updated: 2021-01-26
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:53:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,357
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28995528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plikki/pseuds/plikki
Summary: Marinette knew there was one thing she should avoid at all cost and believed she could do it. After all, she'd done it without effort in the past. Then why did falling in love with Chat happen so easily when she was fighting it?
Relationships: Adrien Agreste | Chat Noir/Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug
Comments: 28
Kudos: 194





	Things will never be the same again

**Author's Note:**

> Chat Blanc week is over, I'm just a little late, but since this is post-Chat Blanc, it seems fitting. Angst found its way out after all. Plagg couldn't stop it this time. 
> 
> The song is Never Be The Same Again by Mel C.

Marinette took nothing as seriously as her duties as a superhero. She had to give up her free time, disappoint her parents, abandon her friends and miss school because of random akuma attacks, but she accepted it because it was her duty. So if she knew what she had to do to save Paris (and the world) from an apocalyptic future, she would do it. After all it wasn’t even something that hard.

She’d had no problem avoiding falling in love with Chat in the past. She hadn’t even had to try. So she wasn’t worried. As a result of this, she became complacent. She just didn’t think there was any danger for her. 

Hanging out with Chat was nothing scary, they did it all the time. So when a patrol ran late and they still didn’t feel like going home, she wasn’t worried. They could talk and laugh under the moon and she didn’t see anything wrong in that, she didn’t feel threatened by how at home she felt with him.

Hugging him came naturally to her. They were friends, they did that. Sometimes it was in relief after a scary fight, sometimes it was just the calmness of the moment they were sharing. She also felt how much Chat needed that from the way he clung to her while also being careful not to overstep a mark. 

She was trying to catch her breath, her belly hurting from the laughter and if his arms happened to be around her, so what? When she looked up at him, he’d stopped laughing and was looking at her with an unbelievable softness in her eyes. This no longer surprised her, but it should have warned her to take a step back.

Marinette had always expected that danger would come in the form of a scary akuma or a twisted plan from Hawk Moth. She could have expected that a bad battle ending could have made her do something stupid from the sheer relief that it was over. But she’d never expected that the real danger would be in the spilled laughter and their shining eyes and the closeness that was no longer scary.

When she felt that pull, that invisible something that made her forget where she was and why she had to be careful, she didn’t fight it. It wasn’t a terror in the night she should run away from. It was exactly the opposite. 

When she pushed up on her tiptoes to get closer, he didn’t flinch away. He didn’t know that he needed to protect himself and her. He followed her lead because he trusted her and in this case she could feel his bewilderment and barely contained hope.

“M’lady,” he said softly, all the love he felt collected in that small word, the only endearment that went straight to her heart, and she was lost. 

_ I call you up whenever things go wrong  
You're always there, you are my shoulder to cry on  
I can't believe it took me quite so long  
To take the forbidden step  
Is this something that I might regret? _

When he leaned in, she could feel distant alarm bells going off in her mind, but she was too far gone. She didn’t have strength to pull back, she didn’t want to break the spell, she didn’t want to go back to the cold reality when she could have this. 

When he kissed her, she felt as light and careless as a feather in the wind. She felt safe in his arms, his love gave her wings, but it was also as if a weight had been lifted from her. She stopped fighting, something she hadn’t realised she’d been doing. And along with the melting softness of the kiss, she felt something else finally taking hold of her. She thought she’d needed him before, after that first terrible moment when she’d realised that she couldn’t do this without him. He was a part of her and she needed him next to her, as her partner and her friend. But now she needed him even more. She loved him. 

The realisation came slowly and crept up on her. It made her cling to him and kiss him harder. She couldn’t imagine having to let him go. She couldn’t imagine backtracking from this. She couldn’t do it. 

Only then did she understand what this meant and pulled back from him with a gasp, tears filling her eyes. 

“What’s wrong?” He gasped, no doubt taken aback by her reaction.

“No, no, no. This can’t be happening!” She exclaimed. 

“I thought you wanted… I… otherwise I’d never. I’m sorry,” he said, regret reshaping his features. 

“I wanted, yes, that’s the problem,” she hiccuped as tears streamed down her face. She’d been so stupid, she’d let her guard down for one second and that had been all that was needed. It was done. It was too late.

“It’s ok, if you regret it, it doesn’t have to change anything between us,” he whispered, hands reaching for her and retreating before touching her because he was at a loss, she could tell even as she looked at him through blurry eyes. 

_ It's not a secret anymore  
Now we've opened up the door  
Starting tonight and from now on  
We'll never, never be the same again _

“It’s too late,” she repeated out loud. “It will never be the same.” She knew there was no point in trying to forget or pretend it hadn’t happened. She knew and that was all that mattered. “I love you,” she managed to say before another sob wracked through her.

“Is… is this a bad thing?” He asked quietly, his voice barely loud enough for her to hear over the heart thundering in her ears. 

How could she leave him like that, totally perplexed by her reaction, without telling him the truth? He needed to know, anyway, about the danger they were in. All because of her. 

Marinette took a deep breath, blinking furiously in an attempt to clear her eyes. Her heart was aching, but she could do this.

“You told me that our love destroyed the world,” she said slowly, looking at him. She saw the way his eyes widened in surprise but when the full implications of her words reached him, he flinched. 

“No,” he whispered. “It can’t be.”

“I saw it. I saw it with my own eyes. Everything was broken, there was water everywhere, as if an apocalypse had happened. And that apocalypse was you.”

“Me?” He asked incredulously. She could imagine how unbelievable it sounded to him. If she hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen the emptiness in his eyes and hadn’t heard the hollowness of his voice, she couldn’t have believed it herself. Her kitty being the most vicious akuma to ever exist, obliterating everything and everyone. Alone and slowly going mad, driven only by his desire to repair everything, to get back the love that he’d lost. 

She nodded numbly as she remembered how helpless she’d felt, how impossible it had been to fight him, to try to take him down, while also trying to make sense of everything he’d told her. 

“But here you are,” he said. She was there, yes, as opposed to being a statue turning to dust under the great expanses of water in that perishing world. 

“It was repaired, that timeline never happened,” she said, feeling how detached she sounded from the whole thing. All this time she’d been trying to pretend it was over. If she’d succeeded why were her dreams haunted by his words? Why did her heart ache when she imagined what had been true before things had turned bad? 

“But?”

“But it can happen again. If we make the same mistakes, if we’re… in love,” she whispered. 

“Are you sure about that? That we caused it?” He asked, pursing his lips.

“It was what you told me!” She said.

“Did I… look trustworthy?” 

His words hit too close home for comfort. It was what she’d been going over again and again after every nightmare, after every moment of weakness. She had only Tikki to talk to and she’d been surprisingly reluctant to trust the version that Marinette had patched up from what she’d heard.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. 

“What does Tikki have to say?” he asked and she admired his thinking, the way he was trying to analyse this and come to an objective conclusion.

“That you weren’t thinking clearly, that you were trying to hurt me and wear me down and knew that those words would do it,” she said quietly. He closed his eyes and ducked his head as if he’d been hit. She understood, it was something unfathomable for him to imagine acting like that, especially with her.

“Did I say anything else at all?” He said, eyes slowly opening but not looking at her.

“That it was all perfect until Hawk Moth found out,” she said. Yes, this somehow made sense. He turned sharply, his eyes on her. 

_ But sometimes it seems completely forbidden  
To discover those feelings that we kept so well hidden  
Where there's no competition and you render my condition  
Though improbable it's not impossible  
For a love that could be unstoppable _

“Well, that’s different. It wasn’t the fact that we were together that caused that,” he said, waving around. “But it was him finding out.”

“It’s one and the same,” she said. She’d tried to reason with herself before but she always arrived at the same conclusion. In order to avoid being caught, they just needed to stay apart. 

“Surely you can’t believe that,” he pleaded. 

“I can! Why do you think I reacted like that? This was my worst nightmare coming to life! Everything was fine while I didn’t love you,” she shouted. 

She knew she wasn’t fair. The hurt on his face caused her physical pain. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered and she could see the tears in his eyes that he was trying to blink back. 

“It’s not your fault,” she said and he laughed mirthlessly. 

“Whose is it if not mine?” 

“I should have been more careful, I should have stayed away from you, I knew the danger we were in,” she said, guilt settling in her stomach like lead.

“M’lady, come on. You can’t bear it all. I’m also part of this.” Yes, he was. “Ok. Nothing has happened. It was just a kiss,” he shrugged. As if she hadn’t seen his heart break over this.

“We can’t just pretend it never happened,” she said. “It’s not just the kiss. It’s me knowing how I feel. I can’t undo this.”

“Then what? Should I give you the ring and just walk out of your life?” She saw his hand protectively cover the ring but she knew he would do it, he’d shown he could if he thought it necessary. The reminder jolted her into action.

“No!” she exclaimed. “I need you.” 

“But what other option do we have?” He said, looking helplessly at her. She took a deep breath, trying to think.

“There was something Tikki said. About you knowing my identity in that future,” she said.

“I’m not following. Was this a bad thing or a good thing?”

“I don’t know! But Tikki said that if we reveal at our own terms, together and in secret, maybe we have a better chance.”

“Do you believe it would make a difference?” He asked skeptically but she could also hear a hint of hope in his voice. 

“I…I tried not to think about this and focus on staying away from you. Which turned out to be too difficult. So, maybe? After all this is coming from Tikki, who was adamant from the beginning that we keep it secret.”

“It sounds dangerous. But I also don’t want to see you like that again. You were a perfect target for Hawk Moth just now, with the turmoil in your heart.” She shuddered. The concern in his eyes told her that he’d been busy worrying about this on top of everything else.

“So let’s do it and hope for the best?” 

Instead of answering, he crossed the distance between them and took her hands in his. The contact was like a jolt of electricity through her. No, there was no way she could pretend things hadn’t changed. He nodded at her and closed his eyes. She did the same and mumbled her transformation phrase together with him.

_And as our energies mix and begin to multiply  
Everyday situations, they start to simplify  
So things will never be the same between you and I  
We intertwined our life forces and now we're unified_

She didn’t think there was anything that could make her heart soar again that night only to feel it sink again. But when she opened her eyes and saw Adrien in front of her, it did. It was him and she couldn’t imagine being happier, but she also realised she’d been that close to losing him as well without knowing it. Wasn’t it interesting how her heart had found its way to him in so many different ways? Maybe it was just meant to be.

“Oh God,” she whispered, swaying on the spot. His hands let go of hers, instead holding her arms firmly.

“Are you ok?” He asked, his eyes searching her face. He didn’t seem surprised at all.

“Yes,” she murmured before throwing her arms around him and hugging him tightly. She heard his surprised gasp, but he held her as well. “I love you. So much.” Tears filled her eyes again, but this time she felt relief.

“I love you too, Marinette,” he said when she looked up at him. “It’s you and me against the world, you know that. Whatever it is, we can deal with it together.”

“I hope you’re right.”

She kissed him and it felt the same while also being just a little different. It was still him but also there was so much more. 

They didn’t get interrupted, the kwamis giving them space. And this made Marinette believe that maybe, just maybe they had a chance. 


End file.
